1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to manufacturing filled buns, and more especially to continuous processes of manufacturing from a continuously fed mass of dough the filled buns consisting of a dough coating and a filling, without exposing the filling.
2. Prior Art
In the prior-art methods the manufacture of high-quality filled buns, such as a bean-jam bun, required manual operations. In a conventional way of manually producing filled buns having a cover of a uniform thickness without exposing the fillings, a mass of kneaded bread dough is divided into smaller masses of dough. Each of them is then stretched into a separate sheet of bread dough shaped as a circle or hexagon. A measured portion of a filling is put on the center of this separate sheet of bread dough. The filling is enveloped by uniformly gathering the edges of the sheet, and then the dough is strongly pinched or twisted at the gathering point to prevent the dough edges from being separated due to the elasticity of the dough.
In the conventional dividing process the dough is weighed and mechanically divided by a piston cylinder. This tends to destroy the gluten network of the dough, and the quality of the dough is thus reduced. Since to recover the lost quality the dough must be later processed, extra equipment is needed. It has also been difficult to automatically carry out those prior-art processes so as to produce low-cost, popular foods, such as bean-jam buns, since it requires a production complex. Thus, no simple method existed in which buns were continuously and automatically produced.
The publication entitled A Collection of Well-known Art, published Feb. 20, 1980, by the Japanese Patent Office, shows, as a conventional technique, a winder having a roller for winding up a continuous sheet of bread dough from one of its sides into a bar of dough.
The winder has not been used for continuously manufacturing completely and neatly encrusted filled buns without exposing the filling. It aims at obtaining a product having a desired weight by cutting a horizontal bar of dough into pieces of equal lengths.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,692,109 discloses an apparatus for continuously cutting a filled cylindrical dough body wherein a blade shaped as a wedge penetrates, from above, the dough body being conveyed on a horizontal conveyor. To cut the dough body the blade is driven both down and laterally. This complex mechanism hinders the efficient mass production of high-quality filled products. Further, the blade is liable to be forced into the filling, and the sections of the cut dough body where it is cut tend to have rough surfaces. Furthermore, since the blade pushes the conveyor down, the dough body is deformed when it is cut so that nonuniformly-shaped products result.
Therefore, when a high-quality filled bun is automatically prepared from a continuously fed mass of dough, an apparatus and method has been required in which the gluten network of the dough is sufficiently developed and kept unharmed, the filling is completely encrusted by the dough crust, and in which the dough body is effectively and neatly cut and shaped.